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An illustration of a light skin woman with long brown hair in a very low cut top. Image: TikTok/AI Manga

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TikTokers are exploiting a dumb AI to generate giant anime boobs

I got it to work using two ballcaps

By Nicole Clark
Nicole Clark (she/her) is a culture editor at Polygon, and a critic covering internet culture, video games, books, and TV, with work in the NY Times, Vice, and Catapult.

TikTok is stuffed with all sorts of filters that make the app a little more chaotic. Often they’ll take off and inspire a massive trend. Right now, one such trend involves using the AI Manga filter to generate a portrait of oneself, in anime style. But there’s a twist: Users are holding bowls, cups — and sometimes even scrunching pillows in front of their chest — to “trick” the AI into generating a portrait with immense, powerful cleavage. And it’s working.

It is not only possible, but also very easy to do using round household objects, even with untraditional boob-enhancing items like rolls of toilet paper. The audio clip associated with the trend has been streamed more than 8.3 million times on the app.

@brihtaney

Replying to @Agnes Wycz I did this before coffee… can you tell… #ai #aiart #anime #quebendición #toiletroll #humor

♬ たぶん - YOASOBI
@ksr.mushroom

ไม่ต้องถึงมือหมอ #ai

♬ たぶん - YOASOBI

It’s unsurprising that it’s this easy to trick the filter. If you’ve been following reports about artificial intelligence-generated art, you know it has a penchant for sexualizing women. That is, some of the apps using AI models like Stable Diffusion — Lensa AI’s magic avatars, for example — have generated NSFW images and nudes for people asking for fantastical avatars, even if they don’t want NSFW images of themselves.

Because popular AI art generators like Stable Diffusion and DALL-E have been trained with internet images, these AI models often reflect societal biases found online. Ergo this AI TikTok filter sexualizing women.

The trend is not just limited to cleavage. Some users have added a bump to their rump. And in my personal favorite rendition of the trend, someone held a four paneled waffle over their exposed stomach, and the AI generated a character with washboard abs.

@levinhotho

Me in the multiverse:

♬ たぶん - YOASOBI

It is equally funny to watch people attempt to trick the filter, only to get unintended results.

After watching tons of TikTokers pull it off, I even tried it myself. I held two ballcaps up to myself, round parts over my chest. Lo and behold, it generated a voluptuous valley of flesh. It was dumb easy and took only two attempts. My cups truly runneth over.

Next up: an AI that can generate fingers correctly.